Venets: The Belogradchik Journal for Local History, Cultural Heritage and Folk Studies Volume 6, Number 1, 2015 Research Section BORDERS AND BORDER ZONES: DIFFERENCES AND EQUALITIES Veliko Tarnovo, 30 May – 1 June, 2014 THE BORDERS OF "SHOPLUK" AND/OR SHOPS WITHOUT BORDERS Petko HRISTOV Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum Bulgarian Academy of Sciences Abstract. A historic and cultural region exists at the heart of the Bal- kans, known in geographic and ethnographic research as Shopluk. This is a region in which, over the last 150 years, state boundaries were moved several times as a result of 5 different wars. Today, the historic Shopluk is where the borders of three nations converge – Republic of Bulgaria, Republic of Serbia and the Republic of Macedonia – and, during the last decade, the region was declared one of the “Euroregions” on the Balkans. Despite the historical simi- larities in traditional culture and language of this population, in the 19th cen- tury it became a subject of nationalist ambitions and a propaganda “wars” between the new national states of Serbia and Bulgaria. The joining of Bulgar- ian-inhabited parts of Shopluk (the regions of today’s Dimitrovgrad and Bosi- legrad in Serbia) to the Kingdom of Serbs, Slovenes and Croats in 1919 cre- ated a long-lasting tension between the two countries, some residues of which can be felt in everyday relations even today. On the other hand, it has been a century-long tradition for men in this region to take part in seasonal labour migrations all over the Balkan Peninsula, despite political borders. In this way, preserving their cultural and lingual specifics, the groups of seasonal workers – migrants from Shopluk, became a bridge for cultural interaction and exchange with other regions in the neighbour countries. Even though today the population of Shopluk exhibits different national identities, historical simi- larities in culture and language can turn the Euroregion between Nish, Sofia and Skopje from one of the poorest on the Balkans to one of the most inte- grated and prosperous. Keywords: border, shopluk, labour migrations, gurbet culture, identity As early as the second half of the 19th century the shopski (adjective from Shop) historical and cultural area, which is known in the Bulgarian eth- nographic literature as Shopluk/Shoplăk1) has attracted attention from the point of view of the geographic distribution, the origins, the dialect and the cultural specifics of the local population of the scholars in Bulgaria and Serbia and, in the last two decades, also in the Republic of Macedonia which announced its independence. Although there is already a significant amount of literature on the etymology of the ethnographonym Shop2) it is still difficult to delineate in strict scientific manner the borders, the dialect variability and the ethno- cultural specifics of the Shopi (plural of Shop) designated in the Bulgarian ethnology as an ethnographic group which is part of the whole Bulgarian na- tion (Вакарелски, 1942, pp. 236-258). In my opinion, this fact results from the ambiguous historical fate of this ethno-culturally similar population (probably even kindred in the past) which inhabits the central mountainous part of the Balkan peninsula where today the state borders of Republic of Bulgaria, Republic of Macedonia and Republic of Serbia gather together. In its turbulent history in the last 135 years this population has changed its state "affiliation" five times and some of the specifics of the dialect and the folk culture of the population which is today divided between the three Balkan states and identifies itself as part of the three modern nations have been used for propaganda and speculations in the various Balkan capitals as early as the 1870s (Hristov, 2002, pp. 65-80). Although it speaks of the integrated "Shopska ethnographic group" as part of the Bulgarian nation, the Bulgarian ethnographic literature from the beginning of the 20th century distinguishes between a number of local groups with their own ethno-cultural specifics: Shopi (or the so called "wooden sho- pi") in the region of Sofia, Graovtsi in the regions of Pernik and Breznik, Znepoltsi in the region of Trăn, Nishavtsi in the region of Tsaribrod and Pirot, Visochani in the regions of Godech and Iskrets, Mrakantsi in the region of Radomir, Kătsavtsi in the region of Kyustendil and Bosilegrad, Kekavtsi in the region of Dupnitsa, Kusatsi in the region of Samokov, Sharenodreshkovtsi in the region of Novo selo etc. This is so because of its past and well-known pe- jorative connotation3) the ethnographonym Shopi is used as self-determination and self-designation solely by the population from the villages in the vicinity of the Bulgarian capital city of Sofia. In the same manner in Macedonia only the population from some of the villages around Kriva Palanka and Kratovo as well as the migrants from these villages speak of themselves as Shopi (Малинов, 2001, pp. 21-39) and in Eastern Serbia the loci of the denomina- tions Torlatsi and Shopi which are often confused (by the scholars!) are not clearly determined (Цвијић, 1922, p. 231; cf. Крстић, 2003, pp. 73-80). That's why, in my opinion it is better if we speak of the Shopluk as a key historical and cultural region in the central part of the Balkans whose population is known in the Balkan historical ethnography with another specif- ic: because of the slender agrarian means of living in their home region, as early as the first half of the 19th century the men from this area crowd in the neighbouring or more distant regions of the Ottoman Empire through the tra- ditional gurbetchiyski/pechalbarski routes of labour migrations often without considering the artificial modern construction called "state political borders" (Hristov, 2008, pp. 215-230). In the Balkan ethnologies there is no unambiguous opinion not only as regards the population defined as Shopi and its origins and ethnogenesis4) but regarding the cultural borders of the Shopluk as well. In the Bulgarian eth- nology Veselin Hadzhinikolov summarizes in the 1980s the various concepts about the geographic borders of the Shopluk as ethno-cultural region as fol- lows: 'The authors examine them (the borders of ‘Shopluk’ – P.H.) in a quite broad sense of the word considering the population of the whole North- western Bulgaria to be Shopi. P. R. Slaveykov in his time draws the line be- tween Shopi and the population from North-Eastern Bulgaria along the Vit River. L. Miletich puts it near the village of Mechka, between Pleven and Ni- kopol. Hristo Vakarelski thinks that the Shopluk in a broad sense is a territory with the following borders: the lower course of the Iskar River, the region of Botevgrad in the south, the Sofia Valley to the east, the whole region of Samokov, the region of Dupnitsa, the region of Kyustendil and Eastern Mace- donia. Thus, the Shopi live not only in the region of Sofia (where the popula- tion identifies itself as ‘Shopi’ – P.H.) and the neighbouring regions but also to the north of the Balkan Mountains – in the region of Vidin, Vratsa, Berkovitsa and even Lom." (Хаджиниколов, 1984, pp. 11-12).5) According to him the Shopski ethno-cultural region and the respective ethnographic group include the regions of Sofia, Pernik, Trăn, Breznik, Tsaribrod, Radomir, Dupnitsa, Kyustendil, Kratovo, Ovche pole, Kriva Palan- ka and partly the region of Kumanovo. This understanding of the Shopluk borders is also maintained in the textbooks of Ethnography of the Bulgarians: as a "centre of the Shopi" are considered the regions of Sofia, Trăn, Breznik, Radomir, the western region of Kystendil, Bosilegrad, Kumanovo and Krato- vo and in the popular sense and according to the traditional view there are Shopi as far as the Danube River by the mouth of the Iskar River, in the re- gions of Botevgrad and Samokov, across the Bulgarian-Serbian border to the west and to Belasitsa to the south" (Колев, 1987, pp. 73-74). All Bulgarian authors are united regarding the Bulgarian national character of the population of these regions and quote the famous conclusion made fifty years ago by the great Bulgarian ethnographer and comedy writer St. L. Kostov which says that "whatever the origins of the word ‘shop’ are, it is clear that this is not a racial name, that is to say related to the race and the origins of the Shopi which like all other Bulgarians are Slavs and speak pure Slavic language" (Костов, Петева, 1935, p. 28). The concept of the Shopluk includes some regions in North-eastern Macedonia and South-eastern Serbia. The western border of the Shopski his- torical and cultural region was not clearly defined even in the past and accord- ing to Jovan Cvijić: "It is very hard, even impossible, to draw such a line be- cause in many of their specifics the Serbians and the Bulgarians are the same people. In addition, between their main national cores there are large zones with transitional population"6) (Цвијић, 1991, p. 209). As "the core of the Shopi" Cvijić considers the region from Ovče pole in Macedonia to the Visok valley in the region of Pirot with the "Old Serbian Šopluk" (this means the region of the Nišava River with the region of Pirot in Serbia and Tsaribrod and Trăn in Bulgaria – P.H.), and the regions of Sofia, Radomir and Breznik in Bulgaria (Цвијић, 1906, p. 180). The common view of the Serbian anthro- pogeography is that the west part of the Shopluk area begins from the regions of Bela Palanka, Vlasina River, Crna Trava and the villages from the region of Pčinja River in Serbia (cf. Николић, 1912, p. 223); it was recently contested by acad.